The Chinese word "玻利维亚" (Bōlìwéiyà) is a direct phonetic transliteration of the Spanish name "Bolivia," formed by selecting characters whose modern Mandarin pronunciations closely approximate the original foreign syllables: "玻" (bō) for "Bo-", "利" (lì) for "-li-", "维" (wéi) for "-vi-", and "亚" (yà) for the final "-a," with each character chosen primarily for its sound rather than its inherent meaning, following the standard practice for rendering foreign country names in Chinese.